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Thursday, September 08, 2016

Officers have also arrested a new suspect on
suspicion of handling some of the still missing £10million of loot

The
elusive fugitive known as Basil

Detectives
are closing in on the elusive Hatton Garden raid fugitive known as “Basil”
after quizzing his fellow gang members in jail.

They have
also arrested
a new suspect, held on suspicion of handling some of the £10million loot still
missing from Britain’s biggest theft.

The
33-year-old was bailed until later this month.

Safe-cracker
Basil, thought to be in his 50s, has eluded justice while the six others in the
gang, most aged in their 60s and 70s, have been jailed for up to seven years.

The April
2015 bank holiday raid on the safety deposit vault in London’s jewellery
quarter netted an estimated £14million.

The
raiders broke into Hatton Garden

Flying
Squad officers confirmed they have spoken to some of
the gang as they continue their hunt for Basil.

In all,
five men have been questioned under caution about Basil and the missing loot.

The lanky
burglar was dubbed “The Ghost” when he vanished after the raid.

A
biography of mas­­termind­ Brian Reader, 77, reveals how
a gang insider believes detectives have known Basil’s identity for months.

The
source suspects he has fled abroad, saying: “The police will watch his house...
he’ll probably come back in a couple of years and hand himself in. Police won’t
have much on him.”

A still
from the film The Hatton Garden Job

In July
the team spearheading the hunt for the master burglar again denied having any
idea who he is.

Scotland
Yard refused to comment this week, saying that officers will not
provide a “running commentary” on their investigation.

Basil
became Reader’s partner in crime to help him deal with modern technology.

The book,
One Last Job, tells how they met in the 1990s when Reader saw the “alarm man”
and computer expert would be a valuable addition to his team.

Basil,
originally from the South East, is around 6ft and slightly built.

He is
from a respectable middle-class family and his father died when Basil was
young.

A gang
insider said: “He’s a kid who found things out using his own initiative­.

"He’s
a problem solver. He would be shown how to open a door or pick a lock and then
he would go away and improve on it... He was always very
surveillance-conscious.”

Basil is
thought to have pulled off several burglaries and the gang’s hierarchy was
split between Basil and Reader, the only true specialist burglars on the team.

Cover of
One Last Job

Scotland
Yard said a man aged 53, held last year on suspicion of conspiracy to handle
stolen goods, is on bail along with the 33-year-old who was arrested on May 19.

A man in
his 40s was freed with no further action.

A film
about the raid, starring ex-EastEnders actor Larry Lamb and Downton’s Matthew
Goode is now in production.

Hatton Garden: Secrets of Tory abuse cover-up that even made heist boss sick

Brian Reader and his gang found sickening images featuring a prominent
Tory cabinet minister during a massive raid in 1971, according to an
insider

CID officers outside Lloyd Bank following the discovery of the robbery

Bankers stopped police from uncovering an alleged Tory child abuse
scandal unwittingly stumbled on by burglars, a new book claims.
Master
thief Brian Reader and his gang found sickening images featuring a
prominent Tory cabinet minister during a massive raid in 1971, according
to an insider.
The crooks allegedly discovered the vile pictures
after tunnelling into a branch of Lloyds in London’s Baker Street and
rifling through scores of safety deposit boxes.
Reader – who four
decades later masterminded the £14million Hatton Garden heist which
also used tunnelling – was said to be disgusted by the images.
But
despite claims that the gang left the evidence scattered across the
floor for police to find, nothing was ever done – and the pictures never
emerged.

Read More

Last January the Mirror reported how Reader’s gang had left
the damning photos for cops, hoping the paedo politician would be
brought to justice.

Brian Reader
Now, 45 years on, it has been revealed that bank staff were
“extremely uncooperative” with police, refusing to provide a full list
of safety deposit box holders or let them remove property from the
vault.
The Baker Street heist has gone down as one of the most
infamous in British history. A gang dubbed the “millionaire moles”
tunnelled 40ft under Baker Street – famed as the HQ of detective
Sherlock Holmes – and blasted their way into the Lloyds branch.
They stole £3.5million from 268 boxes – worth the equivalent of £40million today – making it ­Britain’s biggest ever burglary.
For years the main gang members were never known.
But
in a new Mirror book, One Last Job, it is claimed that Reader – now
aged 77 and serving six years for his part in 2015’s Hatton Garden heist
– had a leading role.
A close confidant of Reader said: “It was a
shock for the gang when they found photographs of a famous ­politician
abusing children.

Rubbish and rubble left in the basement of the Le Sac shop by the robbers

Rubbish and rubble left in the basement of the Le Sac shop by the robbers
“They were disgusted and left the photos lying on the floor of the vault for the police to find but nothing was ever done.”
Freshly
unearthed documents found in the National Archive reveal there was a
“heated argument” between detectives and bank officials inside the
ransacked vault.
Police were never even told about any alleged
pictures the raiders left and the bank refused to reveal the names of
safety deposit box holders without their permission.
The documents suggest bank staff were concerned with protecting their clients’ privacy above all else.

Read More

An internal Scotland Yard memo from 1975, now released,
stated: “There was a considerable quantity of property left in the vault
and tunnel but after a heated argument with bank officials they took
possession of it.
“This property was never handled by police and to this day it is not known what that ­property consisted of or its value.”
After
the raid, detectives wrote to Lloyds asking for details of all deposit
box holders and a breakdown of their visits to the vault.
This was prompted by suspicions that one of them could have gained the “knowledge of the room” required to pull off the heist.

CCTV captured much of the robbery

Smashed safe deposit boxes are pictured in the underground vault of Hatton Garden
But Lloyds’ head of security refused, saying it was “a fundamental
concept” of British banking to preserve secrecy over the affairs of
those who used its services.
An internal police memo from one of
the first officers on the scene, Detective Sergeant Barrie Newman,
stated: “The vault was in complete disarray with property, including
jewellery etc, being scattered about the floor.
“Any property
dropped by the thieves was, in fact, retained by the bank on their
insistence that it was on their premises and their responsibility.
Police are not in a position to say what was left behind and what the
bank did with this property.”
Some of the victims of the robbery
took civil action against Lloyds and senior officers were asked to
provide High Court statements.
Drafts of several statements are in the National Archives.

Read More

In one dated 1974 former Detective Chief Inspector John
Candlish said: “Whilst the bank provided us with every facility which we
required during our investigations they were extremely uncooperative
when it came to dealing with the stolen property itself.”

Details of the alleged cover-up are revealed in a new book
Another was from Commander Robert Huntley, who described the
disagreement between police and bank staff over who should get “custody”
of items taken from safety deposit boxes but left on the floor.
He
added: “I recall that there were various inspectors of the bank at the
premises and I spoke to the chief inspector and the manager who told me
that they had decided not to hand over the property.
“This was probably on the basis that they felt a duty of secrecy to their clients.”
When the bank did finally provide a list of box holders it was incomplete.
Reader,
who will be played in next year’s film The Hatton Garden Job by former
EastEnders star Larry Lamb, has never confessed to being on the Baker
Street raid – but several sources insist that he was there.
Two of his old gang members were eventually convicted.

The Hatton Garden raid was the most lucrative in British criminal history
One was car dealer Reg Tucker, 37, who had rented a deposit box and
visited the vault more than a dozen times, using his umbrella to measure
its dimensions.
Also convicted was Tony Gavin, 38, a
barrel-chested former Army PT instructor who lost a stone and a half
while digging the tunnel.
Excavations began from the basement of Le Sac, a leather goods shop an associate had leased two doors along.
One
gang member who said his doctor had told him to avoid confined spaces
was posted as a lookout on a nearby roof, later becoming known as
“Sleepy Bob” for complaining about being tired. The blast to blow a hole
into the bank vault was timed to coincide with a traffic light turning
green so the noise would be masked by rumbling traffic.

How the Mirror reported the story earlier this year
Gavin and Tucker were later jailed for 12 years along with two minor
gang members. Reader was believed to have jetted off to Spain while the
rest of the team were never caught.
The 2008 film The Bank Job,
starring Jason Statham, suggested MI5 orchestrated the break-in to steal
compromising pictures of Princess Margaret with a lover.
But the gang insider insists reality was even stranger – and even more disturbing – than fiction.

Ukraine hands back stolen paintings to Dutch museum

Kiev authorities
handed over to the Netherlands five masterpieces stolen from a
Dutch museum in 2005 and recovered in Ukraine earlier this year.The
paintings - part of a group of 24 works valued at 10 million euros when
they went missing in 2005 - were said in December to have been
discovered in a villa in a pro-Russian separatist controlled area of
eastern Ukraine.Dating from the
17th and 18th centuries, they will now head back to Westfries Museum in
Hoorn, north of Amsterdam, from where they first disappeared when
thieves hid in the building before closing time and disabled the alarm
system before making off with the artworks.

"I can't wait to see these beautiful objects
of art back in the place where they belong," Westfries Museum director
Ad Geerdink said at a handover ceremony at the Dutch embassy in Kiev.
"It will feel like some of our lost sons finally come home."The
Dutch foreign ministry listed the five paintings as Jacob Waben's
"Vrouw Wereld" (Lady World) and "Terugkeer van Jefta" (The Return of
Jephta), "Keukenstuk" (Kitchen Scene) by Floris van Schooten, Hendrick
Boogaert's "Boerenbruiloft" (A Peasant Wedding) and "Nieuwstraat in
Hoorn" (New Street in Hoorn) by Izaak Ouwater."It's still not clear where the other paintings are and how long it will take to recover them," it said in a statement.

Arrest made in $3 million jewelry theft from rapper Drake's tour bus

Drake speaks with Rihanna after
presenting her with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award during the
2016 MTV Video Music Awards in New York, U.S., August 28, 2016.
REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

An
Arizona stagehand was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of stealing
about $3 million in jewelry from a bus used by Grammy-winning rapper
Drake on his latest concert tour, Phoenix police said.The
suspect, identified as 21-year-old Travion King, snatched the briefcase
after boarding the bus at about 10 p.m. on Tuesday at the Talking Stick
Arena in Phoenix, police spokesman Vince Lewis said.King
has done unspecified contract work with local entertainment venues in
the past, but was not known to be employed for work for that particular
show, Lewis added. The
bus was being used for a Phoenix show featuring Drake and his fellow
rapper Future. It was apparently unoccupied at the time and the jewelry
did not belong to Drake, according to Lewis.Drake
and Future were appearing in the city's downtown as part of the "Summer
Sixteen Tour," which began in July, according to the event website. It
was scheduled to resume on Wednesday in Los Angeles. A representative for Drake declined to comment on the case on Wednesday.King was being held at a Maricopa County jail, Lewis said.He
was first arrested around 3 a.m. in a separate matter by Arizona State
University Police in Tempe, a Phoenix suburb, on suspicion of
trespassing after officers found him in a dormitory with a bag that held
the stolen jewelry, Lewis said.

Then,
just before police released him on Wednesday afternoon, detectives
investigating the jewelry theft learned he was being held at the jail
and arrested him on suspicion of burglary, Lewis said. Portions of King's activity were captured by arena surveillance cameras, Lewis said. Officers are working with the victim to account for the items reported stolen, Lewis said.

Greta Moll’s Heirs Say Stolen Portrait Is at London Museum

Lawsuit says U.K’s National Gallery should have known better

Painting entrusted to student then illegally sold, family says

l

More than a century after she sat for a portrait by Henri Matisse, Greta Moll is still an object of desire.

Portrait of Greta Moll by Henri Matisse.

Source: Rowland & Petroff

The
National Gallery in London was sued in the U.S. by three of her
grandchildren who claim the museum wrongfully acquired the 1908
portrait, decades after the work by the famed French artist was
allegedly stolen in the wake of World War II.
Moll, who had been a
student of Matisse’s, died in 1977 without ever knowing what became of
the painting. Two years after her death, the museum bought the work from
a London gallery for an undisclosed sum. The grandchildren sued for $30
million.
The National
Gallery ignored the red flag that the work had been transferred to a
gallery in New York immediately after the war, according to the suit
filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court. The museum, aware of the
legacy of stolen art from the war, never asked Moll’s family members in
U.K. how she’d lost the painting, they said.
"In many such cases
where war-related looting and other losses occurred, the possessors of
such property eventually did the right thing and returned the lost
artworks," Oliver Williams, Margarete Green and Iris Filmer, who are
cousins, said in the complaint in federal court in Manhattan. "The
National Gallery has ignored the international legal standard."
The National Gallery’s press office said it had received the complaint and declined to comment.
Paintings
and other artworks by European masters have been at the center of
numerous international legal disputes, usually over claims they were
stolen by Nazis from wealthy Jews who were robbed of their possessions
or murdered in the Holocaust. The cases have often pitted aggrieved
descendants against famous dealers and art institutions that may have
inadvertently come into possession of stolen works.

Matisse Students

Moll
sat for Matisse while she and her husband Oskar were his students in
Paris, according to the suit. Oskar Moll bought the painting from
Matisse before he and Greta moved back to Germany to teach and sculpt,
the family members say. The work, known simply as "Portrait of Greta Moll," came to be regarded as a masterpiece of Matisse’s fauve period, and it was hung prominently in the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan in a 1931 Matisse retrospective, according to the suit.
As
the Nazis rose to power, the Molls came to be regarded as degenerates
and “Bolshevist," according to the suit. In 1933, Oskar Moll was fired
from his job as a professor at the Dusseldorf Academy of Art, while one
of Greta Moll’s sculptures was included in the 1937 “Degenerate Art”
exhibition in Munich, according to the complaint.
By 1944, as the
war raged, Greta Moll watched her home in Berlin burn to the ground
after an Allied attack. But by then she’d moved the painting and other
valuables to a friend’s house outside the city. Oskar Moll, who nearly
starved to death during the conflict, died in 1947, according to the
suit. Greta Moll, left as the sole owner of the painting, believed it
was still in danger after Germany fell to the Allies and decided to move
it outside the country altogether before she moved to the U.K. to live
with her daughter’s family in Wales, according to the suit.
"In
order to protect the painting from the danger of looting by Allied
troops and in particular from Russian troops who were known to have
looted artworks and other valuables, they decided to have it sent to
Switzerland for deposit with an acquainted art dealer for safekeeping,"
according to the complaint.
Moll entrusted the painting to an art
student who was supposed to secure it in Switzerland, but the student
sold the painting instead and fled to the Middle East, according to the
suit. The work was then sold in 1949 to a gallery in New York, Knoedler
& Co., which is now closed.
The gallery should have been aware that the Molls were the actual
owners because they were listed as such when the painting was hung in
the Museum of Modern Art 18 years earlier, according to the suit.

True Owner

"When
Knoedler acquired the painting it should have inquired into the
circumstances of the transfer of title from Oskar Moll and Greta Moll,
especially since neither of them was the seller," according to the
complaint. "Since Knoedler did not acquire title from Greta Moll, the
true owner of the painting, neither Knoedler nor any of the painting’s
subsequent owners, including the National Gallery, obtained good title."From New
York, the painting was sold by Knoedler to oil baron Lee Blaffer in
Texas, then to a private collection in Switzerland, then to the Lefevre
Gallery in London, according to the suit. The National Gallery bought
the portrait from the Lefevre Gallery in 1979, two years after Greta
Moll died, according to the suit. The Lefevre Gallery closed in 2002.
Williams,
Green and Filmer are the children of the Molls’s two daughters, their
attorney David Rowland said in an interview. He said the cousins were
barred from suing in U.K. due to a 1992 law that forbids the National
Gallery from dispensing any of its objects.
The case may have a
hard time surviving in federal court, said Thomas Kline, of counsel at
Andrews Kurth LLC, who has represented claimants, collectors and museums
in several restitution cases, because the plaintiffs and two out of
three defendants are U.K. citizens.
The only U.S.-based defendant
is a charity known as the American Friends of the National Gallery of
Art, London, according to the complaint.
“The only reason
plaintiffs sued here is to avoid the U.K. law that forbids the museum"
from selling works from their collection, Kline said. “This is a dispute
between all U.K. parties concerning a painting in the U.K. I think a
U.S. court would have discretion to decline jurisdiction.”

No Connection

The
American Friends of the National Gallery of Art never had a connection
with the Matisse painting, said Art Hickok, the group’s administrator.
“We
have no formal economic connection other than we are a charity that
supports them,” he said. At least two directors of American Friends are
also on the board of the National Gallery, according to the websites.
There may be another complication to the case too, Kline said.
“If
something is given to a friend for safekeeping and there is a personal
relationship of trust it’s very difficult to sort out what really
happened 70 years later if there’s no paperwork,” he said.
The
case is Oliver Williams v. The National Gallery of Art, London,
16-cv-06978, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York
(Manhattan).

Drouot Auction House Trial Ends With Thirty-Eight Jailed For Theft

The trial in Paris involving many of
the porters and auctioneers at the renowned Hotel Drouot auction house
has ended with the jailing of 35 porters and three auctioneers. The
defendants, who transported and stored objects destined for sale by
Drouot, were found guilty of helping themselves to treasures including
diamonds and a painting by Marc Chagall. They were sentenced to up to
three years in jail, with 18 months suspended, and fined 60,000 euros
($67,000). Three auctioneers were also convicted in the scandal that
shook the French art world, with the three receiving suspended sentences
of up to 18 months plus fines of 25,000 euros.
The auction house had been riddled with scandal when valuable
art, antiques and gems worth millions of euros went systematically. This
was the charge on the opening day of a trial back in March, which has
sent shudders down the corrupt spine of a barely regulated industry.
Porters from Paris' most famous auction house are accused of unlawfully
taking 250 tonnes of consigned goods which included a painting by Marc
Chagall and rare Ming dynasty porcelain. The trial continues until April
4.
Forty Porters known as "Col Rouge" (red collars) after their
uniforms and six auctioneers from the Le Drouot are on trial for
charges of gang-related theft, conspiracy to commit a crime or handling
stolen goods. The case against the employees was launched in 2009 after
an anonymous tip alerted investigators to a painting by Gustave Courbet
that disappeared while being transported in 2003. Investigators allege
institutionalised theft by the porters -- known as "Les Savoyards" as
all members of the secretive group came from the Alpine region of
Savoie.
Police Raids have uncovered a treasure trove that went missing
and has exposed the lavish lifestyle of the porters involved. One
according to reports flaunted it by driving a Porsche 911 and the latest
BMW cabriolet, while another purchased a Paris bar with the ill-gained
goods. The porters pilfered items sent to the auction house after house
clearances of wealthy people who had died. Most items were not on the
inventory. Some items were apparently then sold at auction at Le
Drouot.
“La yape" which means "theft" in Savoie slang -- was endemic
and profits were shared among the group. The "Col Rouge", who wear
black uniforms with red collars, have monopolised the transport and
handling of valuables for the Hotel Drouot auction house since 1860.
Membership of the union is tightly controlled and limited to 110. Each
new member was apparently brought into the fold by an existing member,
and according to some testimonies, the initiation process involved
stealing something and sharing the proceeds with fellow insiders.

THIRTY WORKS OF ART RECOVERED IN TORREVIEJA

Alicante’s Civil Guard in Alicante has arrested a Spanish man aged
51, as it continues to investigate two others, a 37 year old woman of
Brazilian nationality and another Spanish National on suspicion of
several counts of theft, aiding and abetting, the illegal possession of
weapons, crimes against cultural, historical and artistic heritage and
fraud.
Investigation first began after the allegation of the theft of nearly
400 bee hives on farms located in different municipalities of the Vega
Baja. The thefts occurred in the towns of Formentera de Segura, San
Isidro and Guardamar del Segura over the last 18 months. It would appear
that the group were both selling the hives and claiming that they had
been stolen, thus also profiting from fraudulent insurance claims to a
value of approximately 21,000 euros.
However, during the investigation, there were a number of additional
offences that surfaced suggesting that they were involved in other shady
deals.
It appeared that one of the trio, from Almeria, was a builder. He
also ran an antique shop, which could be used as a cover for the sale of
stolen goods.
Agents discovered that he was offering various pieces of art at
knockdown prices for between 3,000 and 18,000 euros. Among the items for
sale was a well known wooden carving of the Immaculate Virgin, dated
between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, originating from la
escuela Granadina de Alonso Cano
The man was also involved in the robbery of a house in a town of
Almería, which took place in 2006, from which several firearms had been
stolen, so the agents suspected he could be armed and dangerous.
On obtaining a warrant and searching the house of one of the accused,
in addition to 171 beehives and 45 honeycombs, officers found about
thirty priceless objects of art, among them paintings by Cecilio Plá,
Chinese historical vases, elephant tusks measuring nearly two meters, a
metre high bronze horse, an extensive collection of coins and a sword
carved from bone.
Many have since been moved to the Department of Culture of the
Provincial Council of Alicante where they are being examined to
determine their value.
A further house search in the Orihuela village of Mudamiento
uncovered further weapons including a Benelli rifle, a KRICO carbine, a
Franchi shotgun and an automatic Walther pistol, all from the 2006
burglary of the house in Almeria.

Himself a former trafficker of stolen art, Turbo Paul Hendry M.A. provides information to the readers of his blogs (including collectors, victims, insurers, and other members of the public) regarding the latest news from the world of stolen art and artifacts and, wherever possible, he assists in the recovery of art and artifacts stolen by others. Art Hostage, for the last Ten years, has provided services to private individuals, insurers, law enforcement agencies, and to those who have information that will lead to the recovery of stolen art.